

















TAYLOR’S 


BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


William Marcus Taylor, A. B., Ph. G., BP. D. 

u - 

author of 

“The More Abundant Life” 
and 

Founder and President of the Faculty 

of the 

TAYLOR SCHOOL OF BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 

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o > J , 

) 

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PART FIRST—FIFTH LECTURE 





Copyright 1923 by 

The Taylor School of Bio-Psychology 
Chattanooga, Tenn. 



AUG 15 1323 

©C1A711534 




I 


"Life is not as idle ore, 

But iron dug from central gloom, 

And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipped in baths of hissing tears 
And battered by the shocks of doom 
To shape and use.’ 1 

At last this tempered vital force 
Wrought from Nature’s Primal Source, 
A brain to reason and control 
The flaming passions of its soul, 

For health and peace and power of Man; 
Life’s consumate flower. 


158 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


CHAPTER y. 


Bio-Psycho-Pathology 

Progress is the law of life and mind, but, in their pres¬ 
ent state of existence, progress must be through material 
form and energic function. The whole cosmic system 
seems to be working towards bio-psychological perfection 
but nature works slowly and wastefully, yet very pre¬ 
cisely. Man’s impatience leads him to take a hand in 
his own progress with special attention to speed and econ¬ 
omy: he has succeeded to a great measure, but, with it 
all, he has brought upon himself a sense of instability and 
sickness as a by-product of progress. Sickness is the 
price man pays for a too rapid development on one hand 
and a too rigid economy of vital energy on the other; 
for speeding up the sensory and motor centers overwhelms 
the rational thought processes and leads to distraction, 
while a too rigid economy of life’s forces burns out the 
organism. 

Organism, life, and mind, are so nearly identical in 
reality, that they must travel the road of progress to¬ 
gether. Mind is subjectively developed and controlled 
from memories and habits of past activities; memories and 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


159 


habits are products of biological experiences, and biolog¬ 
ical experiences are enmeshed in the bodily substances. 
Organic substance is developed from the inorganic by 
virtue of its power to receive and to store, within itself, 
the effect of shocks and of experience received from its 
environment. 

This principle of lability, mobility, impressionability, 
retaining ability and recollecting ability, as against sta¬ 
bility, fragility and resistance, is the measure of the degree 
of progress that life has made in the world. The dis¬ 
tinguishing mark of life is its changeability, plasticity, 
mobility, versatility and inheritability. The motive of all 
organic forms of life is to live, to develop, and to pro¬ 
gress toward self-maximation. Life persists by adaptive 
response to its environmental stimuli, through action, in¬ 
teraction and reaction with the elements in its world, on 
the principle of “the survival of the fittest to live.” The 
organic unit is always impinged upon by the elements 
in its environment: by its reaction to them it is modified 
within itself, and, in turn, it reacts in a modifying way 
upon its environment. Thus life and environment change, 
and must always change together. 

The first reactions of the organism to its environment 
were direct, immediate, and in the exact direction and 
proportion of the stimuli. The formula came to be: 1st, 
stimulus; 2nd, chemical inward changes; 3rd, motor-act 


160 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


and effect. Thus, by functional repetiton and habit, ac¬ 
tion patterns were developed. Each action pattern was 
specific to the exact stimulus, which gave rise to it through 
its selection of it. These functional action patterns were 
passed on and preserved by inheritance until the func¬ 
tions developed into specialized nerves constituting reflex 
arcs, which exercise the power of associative memory, 
and respond not only to the exact stimulus which orig¬ 
inally gave rise to them, but also to any similar stimuli. 

The organism became more and more complex until 
there were many separate reflex arcs of response and 
many stimuli, all impinging upon the organism at one 
and the same time and requiring simultaneous divergent 
and antagonistic responses. Out of this condition, there 
were developed nerve ganglia as centers of the various 
reflex arcs, which serve as arbiters, and they determine 
the final common path of motor reflex action at any mo¬ 
ment in the interest of the peace, safety and success of 
the whole mechanism. The repeated response of the 
reflex arcs to the various demands of procurement, de¬ 
fense, and procreation, canalized the nerve matter, in¬ 
creased its conductivity, lowered the threshold of sensi¬ 
bility to stimulus and facilitated motor response. The 
summation of these experiences in memory developed 
physiological, mental and moral efficiency in self-preser¬ 
vation and progress, and these have been passed on by 
inheritance to the future generations of the species. 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


161 

Ik... 


Each of the species develops the action patterns and 
habits which have proven most valuable for the preser¬ 
vation of its kind. The chicken will fly from the hawk 
instinctively, when the shadow falls upon the retina of 
its eye: while a cow will pay it no heed whatever. Why 
this difference? Because the hawk has a selective in¬ 
fluence upon the chicken species, but none on that of the 
cow. 

Bio-psychologically alien species could not cross-breed, 
for there would rise such antagonism in the offspring, be¬ 
tween the habits and action patterns of response, that life 
would be intolerable. The cross between a lion and a 
deer would produce a hybrid, which would be torn be¬ 
tween the desire for fight and flight. The cross between 
the hawk and the chicken would produce an offspring, 
which would be torn between the impulse to attack and 
the impulse to run and hide. The virile, quick-motioned 
race horse and the sluggish, obstinate ass, are of the same 
organic type, and their responses to environment differ 
little except in alertness and speed of motion, yet, when 
crossed, they give issue to a sterile, non-self-perpetuating 
mule in which the characteristics of each are either neu¬ 
tralized or modified. 

Out of the common habits and action patterns of the 
species or the clan, families and individuals may develop 
new habits, new methods of response and new charac- 


162 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


teristics, and they may suppress the old ones; yet the phy- 
letic or ancestral action patterns, which lie dormant, may 
be awakened and called into action by a return of the 
ancient stimulus that gave rise to them. The individual 
may outgrow family traits, but these traits are so deeply 
wrought that they are likely to struggle for a return to 
action. 

Out of the interaction between the organism and its 
environment, there has developed the specialized senses 
of feeling, tasting, smelling, hearing and seeing. All 
these sense organs are the result of repeated localized 
external stimuli, which developed habits of response, ac¬ 
tion patterns, reflex nervous arcs, pleasure-pain memory, 
and the instinctive desires to embrace, to flee from, or to 
combat. Out of the impingements of environment, and 
the responsive desire to test the qualities of the objects for 
bio-psychological purposes, the specialized organic senses 
came to be. In other words, the organs of sense are the 
result of long-ages of chronic bruises from external objects, 
plus the ever increasing and intensified desire, upon the 
part of the organism, to know what the impinging objects 
were. By the law of phylogeny, or inheritance, man has 

come into possession of two sets of sense organs, classified 

* 

by physiologists as receptor organs. 

First, there are the external receptors, which are act¬ 
ive in receiving and passing judgment upon various ele¬ 
ments in the exterior environment. 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


163 


Second, there are the internal receptors acting chemic¬ 
ally through food-metabolation, blood circulation, bodily 
poses, and glandular secretions. 

The external receptor organs are of two kinds, the con¬ 
tact and the distance. The contact receptors are the 
sense centers of feeling and tasting, and they are distrib¬ 
uted throughout the surface layers of the mucous mem¬ 
brane and the skin. They apprehend impulses from di¬ 
rect physical impacts. They are irritated by contact 
with such things as heat, cold, dust, stones, insects, dis¬ 
agreeable flavors, or obnoxious odors, and they are 
pleased when surrounded by a normal temperature, or 
brought into contact with agreeable flavors, exquisite 
odors, or a caressing touch. They act as critics on our 
physical surroundings; pass judgment on the quality of 
the food and liquids we take into our bodies, and apprise 
us as to the time for elimination. Whenever subjected 
to abnormal stimulation, these contact receptors draw to 
their segment an accumulation of energy, which is imme¬ 
diately discharged in some local motor act, such as laugh¬ 
ter, sneezing, or spasmodic muscular movement. 

The contact receptors are motivated by the principle 
of pleasure and pain. In type, location and intensity, 
pain and pleasure sense areas are always specific to the 
stimulus by which they are evoked. Pain is always asso¬ 
ciated with some form of muscular action by which the 


164 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


body moves away from, fights off or expels from the body, 
harmful agents, and pleasure is always associated with 
some form of muscular action by which the organism 
moves toward and grasps that which it desires. 

Muscular activity which follows pain or pleasure is 
specific also in type, location, and intensity, to the excit¬ 
ing stimulus. Every sensitive spot constitutes a page in 
human history. The record of the past is upon mankind. 
His body bears the marks of the history of an age-long 
conflict; it is a veritable encyclopaedia of his hand-to- 
hand encounters with wild beasts, with insects and with 
opposing tribes; and these facts are more accurately re¬ 
corded in his flesh than in any matter of history we can 
find in our text-books. The memories of these wounds and 
hazards of conflict have been implanted deep within us, 
and are today manifested in an overpowering fear of cer¬ 
tain animals, colors, noises, and sensations of pain, when¬ 
ever we encounter similar experiences. 

The phylogenetic principle, which has been instru¬ 
mental in developing the reflex motor response for adap¬ 
tive ends, and which has also developed association of 
ideas for adaptive ends, is based upon the adaptive re¬ 
sponses of the organism during its evolution. 

A good illustration of this principle is found in the 
“Venus-flytrap”, a plant which has developed its pe- 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


165 


culiar reflex system in order to satisfy its rapacious desire 
for insects. Any light touch on the sensitive sense area 
of the leaves of this plant, simulating the tread or move¬ 
ment of an insect, will cause them to close momentarily, 
but they immediately open again upon the discovery of 
the error, showing an impulsive reaction to identical stim¬ 
uli, even when it is combined with selective discretion. 

In the case of animals, or human beings, the reflex re¬ 
sponse to irritating impingements depends largely upon 
two factors: 

_ ♦ 

1st, Upon whether or not the present infliction ap¬ 
proximates the injury inflicted upon the ancestors during 
phylogeny; i.e., racial history. 

2nd, Upon whether or not the same region of the 
body has been exposed to like injury during a vast period 
of phylogenetic development. 

Injuries from artificial, extra-natural agencies, such as 
sharp knives, bullets, or X-Ray, which do not simulate 
experiences from which our ancestors survived, cause little 
or no pain; but injuries from blunt, tearing, or scraping 
instruments, simulating the common type of phylogenetic 
attacks with claws and teeth, or the bruising and crushing 
contacts of natural objects, cause swift and powerful pain. 

Injuries to the protected parts of the body which were 


166 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


rarely attacked by enemies in the past, and in which no 
sense centers have been developed because such wounds 
resulted in death, cause pain only when some sensitive 
region is involved. The hands, limbs, chest, and front 
of the body, are all thickly sown with pain ceptors, while 
the back has few of them. This fact shows that man has 
always been a face-to-face fighter, and by no means a 
coward. 

Tickling sensations are relics of prehistoric perils of 
crawling insects, or the gnawing of teeth in the soft parts 
of the body, and these sensations may be artificially re¬ 
produced by a simulation of this phyletic experience. 
This simulation will cause muscular reflex action in 
either animal or man, but the latter, knowing the tickling 
to be artificial, responds in a compensatory way by laugh¬ 
ing. The mechanism is this; the stimulation of a phy- 
letically ticklish area causes an automatic discharge of 
energy for fight, but this outlet is inhibited on account of 
the antagonist being a friend, so the subject adopts the 
relief of laughter. Herein we find one of the primary 
laws of the bio-psychological sublimation of energy. 

The extension of the sensory functions to a distance, 
in the form of smelling, hearing, and seeing, is of won¬ 
derful significance. Distance receptors are different from 
the contact receptors in that, instead of producing local 
and immediate response in the specific segments of the 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


167 


body to specific stimuli in the environment, they affect the 
body as a whole to a larger range of environment, with 
greater privilege of choice in reaction. This is possible 
because of the added time for deliberation before action 
can take place. 

These advantages may result in the inhibition of the 
locomotor reactions, rather than in their consummation, 
by converting muscular response into emotion. We now 
know that fear and anger are the result of the inhibition 
of the reaction of flight or fight, and we have also learned 
that these major emotions produce gross chemical and 
physiological changes in the body, for they restrain the 
action of some of the organs, while driving others to 
excess. 

As fear recapitulates the ancestral act of flight from 
enemies, with all the chemical changes and the organic 
integrations and inhibitions necessary thereto,, so rage 
and anger recapitulate the chemical and physiological 
changes experienced by primitive man in attack. The 
difference lies in the fact that in fight, or flight, the energy 
is discharged outwardly, while in anger and fright it is 
discharged inwardly. 

At the sight of the enemy, the whole organism of the 
primitive man assumed the pose of response, and the 
chemical secretions necessary to sustain muscular activity 


168 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


were poured into the blood currents, but whenever his re¬ 
sponse in action was inhibited for any reason whatever, 
these physiological changes were sublimated, or trans¬ 
muted, into emotion, which was stored in time in the 
germinal cell, and passed on to us by inheritance in the 
form of tendencies. Thus it is that this attribute persists 
to the present time, in spite of the disappearance of most 
of the stimuli to active physical combat, and we see man’s 
energies drained today, when there is the slightest hint of 
danger from any source, exactly as in the days of his 
physical life and death struggle in a jungle environment. 

So strong is the force of these ancestral acts, so firmly 
established are the action patterns of muscular response 
to the fear stimulus, that now, whether fear arises from 
imagination, from threatening catastrophe, or from the 
prospect of actual attack, this fear is expressed in terms 
of the ancestral flight for safety or fight for life; or, when 
they are inhibited, they are turned into emotion. Threat¬ 
ened moral, financial, or social disasters, cause the heart 
to beat wildly, quicken respiration, and cause one to 
tremble, to turn cold, to sweat, to turn pale, to feel faint, 
and finally to collapse, just as primitive man did when 
actually attacked by wild beasts or savage enemies. Thus 
by the principle of inhibited action and association, trans¬ 
ference, and transformation, fear is raised to the Nth 
degree in our times of perpetual excitement. 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


169 


Fear, anger, and affection, express in emotional form 
the primary motor acts of flight, fight and conjugation. 
These may assume the chronic forms of anxiety, antici¬ 
pation, disappointment, grief, despair, envy, or jealousy. 
Grief is defeat; despair is the chronic state of desperate 
and unsuccessful struggle; envy is a chronic form of 
craving, and jealousy is a chronic form of inhibited sexual 
passion. 

The presence in the body of various energizing secre¬ 
tions, formerly needed for flight, combat, and conjugal 
embrace, are now inhibited and discharged in the body 
in the form of emotions, integrations, and hyper-tensions, 
which are injurious to the health of the individual. 

The emotions resulting from inhibitions affect the 
chemical balance of the bodily functions. Vital chem¬ 
istry which governs the processes of food intake, metab¬ 
olism, and immunity against disease, has been built up 
phylogenetically, and has been inherited by the indi¬ 
vidual; hence any disturbance of the chemical reactions 
affects the health and sanity of the organism. 

Experience has built up reciprocal adaptations between 
the human organism and plants and animals. The man 
cultivates the crop, feeds it to a cow, the cow gives milk, 
the man drinks the milk and is sustained to raise another 
crop. This process is called symbiosis, for it creates 


170 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


a balance, poise, and kinship, within and without. When¬ 
ever symbiosis and synthesis give place to antitheses and 
discords, the individual organism suffers. 

Vito-chemistry is constantly engaged in keeping the 
elements of the body chemically balanced between al¬ 
kalinity and acidity; between blood-fluidity and blood- 
coagulation, and in maintaining a neutral condition be¬ 
tween infection and anti-bodies, as we observe in phago¬ 
cytosis and the establishing of immunities against toxins. 

The range of chemical, motor, and emotional reactions, 
is increased greatly by the principle of association; a fact 
which has been proven many times by a wide range of 
scientific experimentation. One of these interesting tests 
was made on a dog by simultaneously ringing a bell, 
placing some meat on a platter, and permitting him to eat. 
At first, the dog’s digestive fluids would not begin to flow 
until he had taken the meat into his mouth. Later, these 
secretions would start when the bare platter was placed 
before him. Still later, the ringing of the bell would 
produce the same effect; and finally, anything which 
caused him to remember any portion of these incidents, 
would, by association, produce the same full stimulative 
effect as did the meat in the mouth in the first instance. 
We thus observe that similar experiences, or the asso¬ 
ciated ideas which may be in any way connected with 
them, not only raise the same identical emotions, but the 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


171 


reflex action inaugurates the corresponding phylogenetic 
glandular activity. The flow of digestive fluids into the 
stomach causes a physiological sensation of uneasiness 
and gnawing within, which we call hunger. This hunger 
is the result of bio-chemical action, and is relieved only 
when this action is neutralized by food. When denied 
food for any unusual length of time, this craving converts 
a portion of its energy into an emotion, which effect up¬ 
sets the chemical balance of the whole organism. 

The adaptation of man to environment is secured by 
a series of physical and chemical reactions. These are 
the outward expressions of a transformation of the latent 
energy within food products, that has been stored in the 
organism, and later released to produce heat and action. 
It requires quite a school of special organic chemists to 
convert this potential, or latent energy, into kinetic, or 
active energy. 

Animal life takes in crude energy in the form of food; 
food is refined by the digestive system; oxygen is taken 
into the blood, and carbon dioxide is taken out of the 
blood, through the respiratory system. Food, oxygen 
and waste are carried to and from the millions of working 
cells by the circulatory system, and the blood is cleared 
of waste by the respiratory, perspiratory, and the urinary 
systems. In the performance of its function, each of these 
systems transforms just enough potential energy into 
kinetic to enable it to do its work. 







This ohart 
shows the 
bio-psychological 
sensory-motor 
reflex arc®. 




Stimulus being applied to only one sensory neu¬ 
ron, i.e., tiny cell brain at extremity of nerve, it is 
converted at once into a muscular reaction. This 
represents the simple reaction of one single reflex 
arc in automatic response to a single stimulus in¬ 
volving a single habit reaction. If it fails to effect 
muscular reaction it is discharged in the organism 
in the form of emotional energy. 

When two or more reflex arcs are stimulated, for 
varied reaso ns, to act i n diverse ways at one and 
the same time, they appeal to tne nextand 
more complex nervous arc, i.e., one o^rfhe many 
nerve ganglia or minor brains located in the spinal 
cord, for an adjustment of differences or a com¬ 
promise act of response. 

When two or more of these sensory motor reflex 
arcs in the spinal cord are involved in like manner 
in various stimuli and diverse tendencies to action, 
they, in turn, appeal to the medullary brain for an 


scA** 




adjustment of their differences, and, if 
^ if’ 1 P edullar y brain is unable to decide 
which of the various reflex arcs shall 
be given a free path for motor action, 
or to effect a unity through compromise, 
the question is passed on to the next 
higher court of appeal, the cerebellum. 

Finally, the appeal may be carried up 
to the supreme court of the organism, 
i.e., the cerebral brain centers, or seat 
of conscious reason, for an ultimate de¬ 
cision of the controversy, for this master 
organ can and must exercise absolute 
control over every sensory motor center 
m the body, from the simplest to the 
most complex, if good health and mental 
sanity is to be maintained. A failure 
t ,?„ effect a harmonious adjustment of 
rhffer^.ces in' iCTfl^m at any on6 of 
these seats of judgment inevitably sets 
the organism towards disintegration and 
self-exhaustion through internal con¬ 
flicts, unless it is finally submitted to 
reason and the judgments of reason are 
complied with. 


SPINAL ARC 
















174 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


The principal organs for releasing and transforming 
active energy are the brain, that great central battery 
which drives the body; the thyroid, which governs tissue 
conductivity; the adrenals, which secure immediate oxi¬ 
dation; the liver, which fabricates glycogen and neutral¬ 
izes acid by-products; and the muscles, which are the 
final converters of latent energy into motion and heat. 

There are adaptive variations in the amount of energy 
stored. The amount of stored convertible energy resident 
in a living organism is proportional to the dependence of 
the organism upon motor activity for survival. As we 
ascend the scale of life from the stationary, or sedentary, 
to the locomotive types, we find increased need for stored 
energy, and in man we find the largest amount of stored 
potential energy of all. 

The functions of the human organism seem to be the 
capture, the transformation, the storage, the direction, 
and the discharge of energy for the purpose of changing 
the external environment, and of maintaining the chemical 
balance, and the organic coordination, of the entire mech¬ 
anism, for the sake of its health and sanity. This energy 
may be transformed and discharged in one of two forms; 
that of force, or that of heat. Force is for those reactions 
necessary to the pursuit of game, for flight from enemy, 
for combat, for defense and for procreation. These reac¬ 
tions distinctly involve the brain, the thyroid, the adrenals, 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


175 


the liver and the muscles. Doctor Crile calls this the 
whole kinetic system. 

In considering the subject in this light, however, we 
must not make the common mistake of classifying the 
kinetic system as a mere machine, operated only by ex¬ 
ternal stimuli, and sustained solely by food metabolation. 
Rather, we must recognize in each individual, first a 
reservoir containing a limited supply of energy, derived 
from food recently eaten; second, the conserved power 
derived from food assimilation over a long period of time, 
and stored throughout the body for emergency demands; 
and finally, we must ever keep in mind our great reserve 
supply of bio-psychological energy, passed on to us by 
all our ancestors, for it is upon the proper discharge of 
these latter, inherent, vital forces, that much of our health 
and happiness depends. 

About the only biological function generally consid¬ 
ered, by the average person, is that of the digestion and 
assimilation of food, with the incident elimination of 
waste products, and usually, the only psychological func¬ 
tion recognized is that of a conscious conception of the 
statistical, encyclopedic, and technical facts necessary 
• to commercial pursuits. These materialists base all suc¬ 
cess in life on man’s ability to acquire material wealth, 
and they use the fear of poverty as a lash to drive their 
deluded victims to distraction. 


176 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


% 

A normal amount of work every day is beneficial and 
strengthening to the organism. Few men or women ever 
over-work, for it does not injure the mill to run at a reas¬ 
onable speed, so long as there is grist in the hopper; but, 
when the hopper is empty, and fear comes in to whirl the 
wheels faster than ever, the whole mechanism runs away 
with itself in a fury of high blood pressure, arterio-sclero- 
sis, brain clot, epilepsy, diabetes, or other ills. 

Every intelligent person realizes that fear is not only 
the greatest drain on our bio-psychological forces, but 
thereby the direct cause of failure, unhappiness, disease, 
and epidemics, yet we go right on teaching our young 
to fear everything with which they come in contact, in¬ 
cluding their natural cravings and desires, and we make 
the torture of hell-fire the chief factor in most of our 
religion. By this I do not imply that all religion is bad, 
for any church or minister can make any sort of religion 
beneficent or harmful to the individual, according to how 
it meets the specific needs of the age. If it frees mar* 
from fragmentariness, conflicts, fears, suppressions, re¬ 
pressions, and regressions, and gives him poise and power, 
it is a good religion,—properly interpreted; but if it splits 
one’s interests into fragments, causes conflicts, fears, sup¬ 
pressions, repressions, and regressions, and breaks one’s 
poise and power, it is a harmful religion; regardless of all 
claims to the contrary. 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


177 


What this driving, adrenal age needs most is a firm 
footing for faith and trust in the present and the final 
good; a new pooling of our powers and interests in a con¬ 
cept of the goodness and the beneficence of the Heart of 
the Universe in which we live; a conscious realization that 
every gland, tissue, organ, and cell, of our bodies, is an 
undivided portion of an Infinite and perfect whole. 

The brain is the master gland, and the body is a mech¬ 
anism, integrated and driven by the brain in response to 
stimuli, either external or internal, by direct contact or by 
distance excitation. If the organic mechanism is normal, 
its rhythmic action never suffers disease and breakdown. 

There is exhaustion, from shock, when the system is 
driven hard and fast for long periods of time. There 
are traumatic shocks, psychic shocks, toxic shocks, infec¬ 
tive shocks and drug shocks, and the pathological effect 
of shock is identical, whatever its cause. 

Any continuous abnormal activation will produce 
chronic shock by cumulation. Disease results from the 
destruction of the balance of the beautifully adjusted 
machinery of normal man. Nervous exhaustion, neu¬ 
rasthenia, insanity, myxademia, goiter, cardio-vascular 
disease, diabetes, Bright’s disease, apoplexy, and acute 
acidosis, all are the result of over-strain and shock. Emo¬ 
tion is the chief destroyer of bio-psychological balance. 
Emotional shocks easily become chronic, for the reason 


178 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


that men chafe and grind under poverty, grief, thwarted 
ambition, unhappy love affairs, loneliness, distrust, envy, 
jealousy, competition, responsibilities, anxiety, uncertainty 
and worry, any of which may be prolonged indefinitely 
either in actuality or in the imagination. 

Emotion is the physiological preparation of the entire 
organism for the production of the primary motor acts of 
running, fighting or procreation. Large amounts of inter¬ 
nal secretions and glycogens are thrown into the blood 
streams for these acts, and this stocking up of the blood 
stream either stimulates or inhibits the action of every 
organ and tissue in the body, according to the role it is 
to play in the intended adaptive muscular response. 

Ordinary stimulation works changes in the sensory 
centers of the brain, and converts latent energy, stored in 
brain cells, into active energy. This energy activates the 
thyroid and adrenals; they, in turn, activate the motor 
centers of the brain, and these activate the muscles, which 
convert carbohydrates into heat or motion. Likewise the 
brain drives the body in response to the activation of in¬ 
fection, or of foreign proteins in the body, exactly as it 
drives the body in response to the external stimulus which 
produces the reaction of running, fighting and procuring. 
The end effect, in the first case, is in chemical action of 
heat, and in the second case, it is in mechanical action 
of motion. The production of heat and the production 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


179 


of motion are often the results of impulses from within. 
Fevers are often produced by brain activity alone, in the 
. absence of infection. It is a well known fact that fear 
produces fever. Anxiety also produces fever; anxious 
friends at surgical operations often have more tempe¬ 
rature than the patient. Sunday visits to the sick are apt 
to cause a rise of temperature in the patients because of 
emotional awakening, or shock. 

The severance of the nerve connection between the 
brain and the muscles of body will deprive an animal 
of motion and reduce it to the stage of the cold-blooded 
variety, in which the temperature rises or falls in hot or 
cold water, or from extreme changes in the atmosphere. 

Since the brain, the liver, the thyroid, the adrenals and 
the muscles, co-operate to transform potential energy into 
kinetic, the loss of the function of any of these organs 
results in the impairment or loss of power to transform 
energy for either heat or motion, while increase of func¬ 
tion of any of them results in the increase of heat and of 
energy. So long as no link in the kinetic chain is broken, 
any of these organs, acting alone, is capable of causing a 
rise in the bodily temperature, while any of them elimi¬ 
nated, by incision or otherwise, will impair the power 
of the body to convert latent energy into heat, or kinetic 


energy. 


180 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


The compensatory reaction of the organs in the kinetic 
system is shown by the fact that the softening of the brain 
reduces the tensions in the whole chain, so that there is a 
slowing down of energy conversion. Cardio-vascular 
diseased people often get well after the softening of 
brain begins, because there is less muscular power, and 
reduced fever production. If the adrenals are suffering 
from destructive lesions, there is subnormal temperature 
and impaired muscular power: in liver degeneracy, and 
tumor, there is muscular and mental weakness, and di¬ 
minished response to all types of stimuli: hypo-tension of 
the muscles, being below normal, causes heat and power 
deficiency, and when the thyroids are deficient, there is 
subnormal temperature and a proneness to infection and 
to physical diseases, which causes the mental powers 
to degenerate all the more. 

In the act of converting stored energy into force for 
motor acts, there is a discharge of hydrogen ion by-prod¬ 
ucts, which afe toxic in their effect upon the system, and 
these gas the brain and cause exhaustion when not 
eliminated. Normally, bio-psychological energy is dis¬ 
charged into the system in the form of heat for muscular 
action and food metabolation. While in action, the sys¬ 
tem is liable to become clogged with acid, or hydrogen 
ion by-products; heat then excites the sweat glands, the 
circulation and the respiration, for the elimination of the 
toxin. Heat also aids the chemical self-defense of the 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


181 


Host, that is about to be destroyed, by the furious com¬ 
bustion necessary to the attainment of its preservation. It 
does this by hindering the growth and proliferation of 
pathogenic baccilli, and by aiding the process called 
phagocytosis, by which the white blood corpuscles break 
down and throw out the disease producing bacteria. With 
each rise of one degree of temperature, the metabolic 
function is increased ten per cent.; so we may properly 
conclude that a rise in the body temperature is an evi¬ 
dence that the bio-psychological process is trying to re¬ 
store the healthy balance. 

The adrenals are emergency glands of fight and flight, 
and are easily excited to action by anger or fear. They 
discharge adrenalin into the circulation, which raises the 
blood pressure, accelerates respiration, slows heart action, 
governs the output of glycogens from the liver, inhibits 
intestinal contraction, widens the alvioli of the lungs, in¬ 
creases oxygen combustion in the muscles, dilates the 
pupils of the eye, results in uterine contraction, causes 
erection of the hair, opens the sweat glands, and activates 
the brain. Whenever fear, or jealousy, becomes chronic, 
diseases run riot, because the blood is transferred from 
the parts nonessential to muscular action, but most essen¬ 
tial to health; i.e., blood is taken from the stomach, the in¬ 
testines, and the genitals, and is concentrated in the heart, 
the lungs, the brain, and the skeletal muscles. Whenever 
circulation is accelerated in the projicient system, and 


182 


TAYLOR’S RIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


metabolism is increased, production of waste products is 
maximated, the skin becomes moist, the breath comes 
faster, the limbs tremble, the extremities tingle and the 
hair stands on end. Disease is inevitable if such an ex¬ 
treme becomes chronic, for this produces a state of un¬ 
balance, causing hypo-tension in the viscera, and hyper¬ 
tension in the projicient system. 

Emotions result from the restraint of action. In primi¬ 
tive life, there was no break between the stimulus and the 

act, or between the preparation for an act and its con- 

» 

summation. There was much free action, and because 
of this little restraint, there was, therefore, but little emo¬ 
tion. 

Modern life is the maximum of the restraint of acts. 
These restrained acts are converted into emotions by our 
generation, hence it is very excitable, and suffers exces¬ 
sive and continuous stimulation of the heart, the liver 
and the muscles. In the coincident excessive and con¬ 
tinuous inhibition of the digestive processes, which neces¬ 
sarily follows emotional excitement, there arises nervous 
indigestion, with the accumulation of unused secretions 
and waste products, which cause organic degeneration. 
Disturbances such as chronic dyspepsia, auto-intoxication, 
eruptions of the skin, urticaria, decay of the teeth and 
falling out of hair, are warnings against the excessive 
driving of the organism, either from external or internal, 
conscious or unconscious excitement. 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


183 


Epidemics of disease always follow in the wake of 
the profound emotions which accompany warfare. The 
dread and anxiety of the great world war filled the blood 
of the people with acid by-products, so that it became 
the culture medium for the bacilli of “flu” and pneu¬ 
monia, as well as of other disease germs. 

Arterio-sclerosis, so common in man today, is not 
known among cattle. It appears in animals and men, 
which have strong feeling under constraint. As a steady 
dropping of water upon the same spot on the surface of 
the body, by a summation of the stimuli, causes gradually 
increasing pain until a state of exhaustion is reached, so 
the continuous activation of the kinetic system, by emo¬ 
tional strain, leads to the summation of the stimuli into 
arterio-sclerosis, high blood pressure, functional disorders 
and final breakdown. 

Man can but perish from the earth if he assumes the 
stagnant role of hypo-tension, or the activating role of 
hyper-tension, as a fixed or chronic state; but if he has 
the fluidity to give free flow to his bio-psychological en¬ 
ergy on progressive lines, and at the same time has the 
elasticity and rebound to swing back and forth, like the 
normal heart from hypo-tensions to hyper-tensions, while 
remaining in neither, he will maximate all his forces and 
functions, and promote health and sanity of both body 
and brain. 


184 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


The motor speed of primitive man, and all men up to 
within the last two centuries, was about one yard per 
second, and man’s whole sensory and motor systems were 
organized to that speed. As civilized man progressed, 
he became more pensive and meditative, and rested fre¬ 
quently, so that his experiences, derived from the motor 
speed of one yard per second, were reduced to subjective 
values through slowing down the physical speed to the 
basis of his deliberation in the thought processes. Before 
the great increase of speed in locomotion, and the craze 
for swift movement, came into vogue, men and women 
had sufficient time to digest their experiences, and reduce 
them to subjective strength, and thus to co-ordinate them 
with movement, so as to keep the objective and the subjec¬ 
tive, or the conscious and unconscious self unified. At 
the present time, the sensory-motor craze for speed, and 
the multiplication of environmental stimuli, makes de¬ 
liberation and quietness all the more essential to safety, 
and to the reduction of these experiences to subjective 
values. Being denied this, we have a state of schizo¬ 
phrenia, or split, between the individual and his objective 
world of reality. He is torn between the necessity for 
deliberation and the craze for speed. The multiplied ex¬ 
periences arising from the speeding up of the sensory- 
motor system, together with the cravings which have 
increased to a painful state, must be compensated for by 
a shortening of the time of action, and the lengthening of 
the time for meditation and deliberation. 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


185 


Speed is a sign of emptiness and weakness, resulting 
in defeat and a sense of fatigue from sheer exhaustion. 

Fatigue is not generally, however, due to exhaustion 
from work but from stagnation; it is not due to the using 
up of bio-psychological energy, but to the checking of 
its flow. The man who is covered up with responsibilities, 
and is worked the longest hours, usually suffers less fa¬ 
tigue than the so-called gentleman of leisure. A com¬ 
manding general will endure all the trials and responsi¬ 
bilities of his position with less fatigue than will his cook. 
This goes to show that fatigue is not so much a physical 
as it is a psychic effect. 

It is a common experience that those who are suffering 
from apparent exhaustion and fatigue will, under the 
sway of a great emotion, exhibit superhuman power 
throughout long periods of time, and instead of suffering 
from fatigue afterwards, they feel refreshed, and the ex¬ 
hilaration of triumph sometimes sustains one in normal 
strength and saves him from a relapse into his former leth¬ 
argic state. Only when the mind’s activities outstrip one’s 
bodily strength do we find genuine physical fatigue, for ex¬ 
haustion from purely physical causes is very rare. Often 
those who are suffering exhaustion are illy advised by 
their friends to take a physical rest, when in fact they 
really need physical work to do in order that the body 
may catch up with the mind, and help it to solve its prob¬ 
lems. 


186 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


Some cases diagnosed as fatigue are not so, being due 
only to the oversensitiveness of the individual to physical 
tiredness, which causes him to exagerate mere trifling 
and transient sensations of tiredness into a feeling of 
complete exhaustion. 

The neurasthenic who watches his respiration, heart 
action, pulse, and digestion, through habits of introspec¬ 
tion and memory of some exceptional experience of fa¬ 
tigue in the past, suffers from a feeling of exhaustion upon 
the slightest pretext. 

A great deal of so-called fatigue is of purely mental 
origin; one feels a depression, and because he has not 
learned to discriminate clearly between mental and phys¬ 
ical sensations, he misinterprets it and attributes it to 
physical causes. A shock, which is primarily mental, 
often results in nervous headache; this is an explanation 
of many functional diseases that are diagnosed as phys¬ 
ical. It is often the case that, when the mind itself is 
fatigued by chronic worry, anxiety, fear, or depression, 
this purely mental exhaustion is attributed to physical 
diseases or causes. 

Purely mental fatigue is chiefly due to the conflicts 
within the mind between the instincts, the emotions, and 
the will. The powerful instincts seek free expression, 
and the will attempts to hold them down; the house is di- 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


187 


vided against itself and it cannot stand. When the in¬ 
stinctive powers are in conflict with one another, strug¬ 
gling for the mastery, they rob us of our bio-psychological 
strength, and produce most painful sensations of ex¬ 
haustion and fatigue. 

Mosso’s famous experiments show that of all factors 
involved in the performance of any action, the mind 
is the first to become fatigued. By subjecting the nerves 
and muscles to electric currents, simulating the normal 
currents of biological forces in amplitude and oscillatory 
rate, after the individual sense of fatigue had come to 
prevent it from reacting under existing bio-psychological 
conditions, he proved that the body is prepared to go on 
functioning, that the flesh is willing but the spirit is weak. 

It is evident that, in most cases of fatigue, the indi¬ 
vidual needs interest in reality more than he needs rest. 
Since the causes of fatigue are due to lack of interest 
in reality, to over-sensitiveness, to ordinary physical tired¬ 
ness, to conviction of weakness, and to conflicts of emo¬ 
tions with emotions, and of will with emotions, such a one 
needs, more than anything else, a motive of purposeful 
altruistic activity. Serving those whom he loves will rid 
him of his morbid introspection; having a sense of confi¬ 
dence will drive away his thoughts of weakness; analysis 
will discover and reveal to rational consciousness the hid¬ 
den cause of his worries, fears, and anxieties; synthesis 


188 


TAYLOR'S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


will convert his instinctive emotions into a united force, 
and re-orient all his powers towards useful and harmoni¬ 
ous ends, and sublimation will lift up his aspirations, and 
give him a restfulness of body and a poise of mind, which 
is the counterpart of bio-psychological power. For weak¬ 
ness results from the wastage caused by restlessness of 
life and mind, while power comes from mental quietude 
and poise. 

The restful life does not demand a withdrawal of one’s 
self from the world of action, or a retirement into an 
ascetic retreat, but it demands such a rational control 
of our thoughts and feelings as will enable us to retain 
a quiescence of mind and a poise of vital power, in the 
midst of the multitude, surrounded by all kinds of cir¬ 
cumstances, and engaged in the activities of ordinary life. 

» • 

The dominant power of control in man is not the will, 

as is so generally claimed, but the rational conscious 
judgment. The instinctive emotions are the blind driving 
forces of life, and, so long as the will acts in conformity 
with their trend, it is felt to be so powerful that it seems 
as though we exercise power only by the force of will; 
but a further consideration shows that the will, acting 
alone, and of itself, is impotent. 

The will may open the sluice gates of power, and ride 
upon the currents to achievement, in accord with the 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


189 


cravings of the instinctive emotions, or, it may serve the 
judgment in directing and controlling these bio-psycholog¬ 
ical forces. It may open the Hood gates, under the direc¬ 
tion and authority of conscious rational judgment, but 
if the reservoir is empty, or the passage way is blocked 
by repressions, it has no ability to liberate power to do 
the work it sets out to do, and the individual is left to 
weakness and despair. 

The instinctive emotions are so much more powerful 
than the will, that often when one thing is willed, another 
thing is done; “What I would, that I do not; but what 
I hate, that I do.” 

In every activity requiring great strength, we have 
to draw upon the instinctive emotions. Fear, being the 
instinct of self-preservation, gives the soldier super-human 
power. Pugnacity, being the instinct of anger and jeal¬ 
ousy, gives the desperate man the power of a half dozen 
ordinary men. Pity, being the instinct of paternal care, 
leads one to heroic acts of defense and reform. Travel, 
being the instinct of migration, takes one through the 
hardships and self-denials of pioneering, for discoveries 
of new values. City-building, being the instinct of the 
herd, leads to civic pride and home building. Society, 
being the instinct of gregariousness, develops great polit¬ 
ical and economic civilizations. And Patriotism, being the 
instinct of self-assertion and ambition to dominion over the 


190 


TAYLOR’S BIO-PSYCHOLOGY 


world, causes men and women to toil, to be taxed, to 
suffer, and to give their lives for political supremacy. 

This chapter shows how the mechanism and the func¬ 
tions of organic life have arisen as a result of shocks from 
the environmental world, and how man has actually 
created his own organism in the “University of Hard 
Knocks.” It also shows that whenever these shocks 
have become so fixed in a chronic state as to become ex¬ 
cessive by accumulation, unbearable by severity, or ex¬ 
hausting through persistence, the individual passes the 
point of possible readjustment, for they disturb the bal¬ 
ance of both body and mind to such an extent that death 
usually ensues. We have also learned that these painful 
conditions may persist and become chronic, either as a 
result of internal emotional states, or external physical 
psychic irritations, and that in order to preserve one’s 
health and sanity it is necessary to guard against such 
conditions by affording the bio-psychological forces an 
ample opportunity for liberation through proper rest and 
recuperation, combined with congenial employment un¬ 
severed from tranquility. 

The following chapters will show how the law of 
bio-psychology operates in releasing these natural powers, 
and in co-ordinating them with the purposes and plans of 
life, so as to draw into them the super-forces of the cos¬ 
mos, by which the individual may rise to the place of 
super-man. 



PRESS OP ANDREWS PRINTERY 
Chattanooga, Tenn. 


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